Colab

Colab is the commonly used abbreviation of the New York City artists' group Collaborative Projects, which was formed after a series of open meetings between artists of various disciplines.[1] Colab came together as a collective in 1977, first using the name Green Corporation, and initially received an NEA Workshop Grant through Center for New Art Activities, Inc., a small not-for-profit formed in 1974. The grant was divided equally among the artist members in groups of three, two of which were required to be Colab members.

In 1978, Collaborative Projects was incorporated as a not-for-profit and later received its tax-exempt status from the IRS, so that it could apply for grants from the NEA and other sources independently.[2] Colab was active for about 10 years and became distinguished by the raw energy of its members and sometimes politically engaged open membership. By raising its own sources of funding, Colab was in control of its own exhibitions and cable TV shows, and bypassed the bigger, more established alternative spaces

From November 1978, different artist members organized and installed original one-off group shows in their own studios or other temporary sites, such as The Batman Show," (591 Broadway 1979), "Income and Wealth Show" (5 Bleecker Store 1979), "Doctors & Dentists Show" (591 Broadway 1979), The Manifesto Show (5 Bleecker Store 1979), "The Dog Show" (591 Broadway 1979), "Just Another Asshole Show" (5 Bleecker Store),The Real Estate Show(Delancey Street, Jan. 1980), Jay St film shows 1979, Exhibit A (93 Grand Street, 1979) and, notably, The Times Square Show (201 W 41st, June 1980), a large open exhibition near the center of New York's entertainment (and pornography) district (Times Square) put on with Bronx-based Fashion Moda. Seed money from the first Colab (Green Corp.) workshop grant through Center for New Art Inc. led to the creation of Colab artists' TV series on Manhattan Cable (1978–1984) "All Color News," "Potato Wolf" and "Red Curtain", New Cinema, a screening room on St. Mark's Place for narrative Super 8 films transferred to video and projected on an Advent screen; the continued publication of X Motion Picture Magazine(1979), whose first issue preceded the formation of Colab ;[3] support and inspiration for the ABC No Rio cultural center (1980-82 (ongoing) created from the Real Estate Show; support of the Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine (1984), NightShift Theater 1979, Spanner Magazine (3 issues 1979), MWF Video Club (established in 1986) and Bomb Magazine (1981).[4] Members of the original group are presently highly active making art, and the membership has shifted and evolved. ABC No Rio was recently awarded a $1.6 million capital construction grant from the City of New York.

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"We [Collaborative Projects] are functioning as a group of artists with complementary resources and skills providing a solid ground for collaborative work directed to the needs of the community-at-large. Specifically we are involved in programs facilitating development, production, and distribution of collaborative works. These works are realized in various media including film and video for distribution and cable-cast, and live cable TV broadcasts, as well as other more conventional art media such as graphics and printed materials."[5]

"This statement (the one above) defines three fundamental aspects of Colab - members' desire to create and distribute "collaborative work" under the umbrella of an artist-run organization, their focus on new media versus traditional art objects and their openness to a range of aesthetic styles that would meet the "needs of the community-at-large." This last point was critical to the group's identity and served as the foundation of a workshop-oriented administration that encouraged experimentation in many different areas, including but not limited to TV production, video editing, film, and performance art. With various workshops operating simultaneously and the participants' ability to draw on like-minded members as partners, Colab could produce many projects without the burden of an institutional identity. Typically, individual members worked together on more than one project in small subgroups that changed and over lapped from one project to the next."[6]

In 1980, artists emulating 1970s Puerto Rican activists seized a building on New York's Lower East Side and opened it as a collectively run cultural center. ABC No Rio was passed on to successive managements until today it is an anarchist cultural center run by a collective with close ties to the publishing group Autonomedia."[7]

"In the bohemia of downtown Manhattan, the band - and crew - based practices of art rock and super-8 film making thrived. The first artists' group to achieve prominence in New York was Colab (Collaborative Projects), which produced a show in Times Square in 1980. This exhibition was a groundswell of popularly accessible socially themed artworks held in an empty building that has housed an erotic massage parlor. Critics called it "punk art" -- "three cord art anyone can play." The South Bronx art space Fashion Moda. participated in the Times Square Show, bringing in some of the new generation of graffiti artists who had been exhibiting in the Bronx as part of the hip-hop culture of writers, rappers, and break dancers. A forty-member democratically run membership group; Colab inspired other artists to form groups and mount huge shows in Brooklyn lofts, not to mention collaboration with the Washington Project for the Arts, for the Ritz Hotel Project in Washington, D.C. in 1983.

In 2008, a small partial retrospective exhibition called "Colab Redux" was held at Brooke Alexander Gallery.[8][9]

In 2011, Printed Matter, Inc. presented an exhibition entitled "A Show about Colab (and Related Activities)". This overarching survey presented a wide range of materials and artworks from various Colab activities from the late 1970s through the mid 1980s, including screenings of film and video works, and cable broadcasts.[10]

In 2012, The Hunter College Art Galleries presented "Times Square Show Revisited", an in-depth look at the original "Times Square Show" (1980). "Times Square Show Revisited" was the first focused assessment of the landmark exhibition organized by the artist group Collaborative Projects, Inc.[11] Bobby G's audio piece "Times Sq. Show Audio" (0:38) appears on Just Another Asshole, a compilation anthology LP that was released in 1981 and reissued in 1995 on Atavistic Records.

In 2013, an exhibition workshop entitled "XFR STN" (Transfer Station) was held at the New Museum.[12] The opening night featured "Moving Image Artists' Distribution Then & Now" an assembly of participants in the MWF video club, introduced by Andrea Callard, Michael Carter, Alan W. Moore, Nick Zedd and Coleen Fitzgibbon. Alan W. Moore created MWF Club in 1986 as a distribution company for Potato Wolf and All Color News COLAB television programs that aired on public access TV. MWF Club expanded to include programs from various other groups such as Communications Update, Downtown TV, Glenn O'Brien's TV Party, New Cinema, Cinema of Transgression, Naked Eye Cinema and numerous artists and filmmakers.[13] Also in 2013 Tom Warren's Photo Portfolio of "Colab Artists Portraits (1981-1984)" were featured at Gallery 98[14] and The Film-Makers' Cooperative presented a mini videoretrospective entitled "Colab TV Video Excerpts" on November 15 at Soho House in New York City with discussion with Tom Otterness.

[14] Raphael Rubinstein, "When bad was good: the art scene of downtown Manhattan ca. 1974-1984 is resurrected in a show that originated in New York and is now in Pittsburgh" Art in America (June–July 2006)